Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
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From: nathan@jacobi.biology.yale.edu (Nathan F. Janette)
Subject: Re: Preserving file ownerships on OD?
Message-ID: <1991Jun21.173507.28191@cs.yale.edu>
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Reply-To: nathan@jacobi.biology.yale.edu.com
Organization: Yale University, Department of Computer Science, New Haven, CT
References: <1991Jun20.220525.5015@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1991 17:35:07 GMT
Lines: 52

In article <1991Jun20.220525.5015@ccu.umanitoba.ca> grdetil@ccu.umanitoba.ca  
(Gilles R. Detillieux) writes:
> I have been reading this group for a while, but haven't seen this question
> addressed:  Why does the NeXT reassign ownership of all files on an
> Optical Disk to the user ID of the person logged in?  Can this be disabled?
> 
> The Optical Disk drive on our NeXT is shared by many people on our network.
> (Now that the OD is no longer standard equipment on NeXT, I suspect that
> a lot of OD drives will be shared in similar ways at other sites.)  We
> find it extremely annoying when one user is logged into the NeXT console
> (usually me), and another user wants to access or update one of his disks,
> logging in over the network.  He inserts his disk, and then all of his files
> now belong to me; he can't even update his own disk because he doesn't have
> write permission on the directories.  I usually have to stop what I'm doing,
> log out, and let the other person log in while he updates his disk, even if
> he is going to do it over the network.
> 
> Am I the only NeXT user to think that this is a REALLY stupid "feature" in
> the NeXT's Optical Disk support?

Somebody say Amen!

I posted complaining about the frustration of trying to allow non-root users
to mount and use the optical drives of remote cubes several weeks ago.  No
one had any useful suggestions to offer...

To summarize what I've learned:

1. You can't export the directory "/OpticalDisk" on a cube unless there is a
disk currently mounted.

2. You can't export "/" to some machines and "/user" to others if both are in
the same filesystem (as noted in the exportfs man pages).

3. You can't mount a remote filesystem as a non-root user.

4. Even if you mount the remote filesystem "/" of a cube with a loaded OD, the
mount point doesn't register in your browser or from a terminal.

5. If you mount the remote filesystem "/OpticalDisk" you experience the file\
permissions trouble detailed above by Gilles R. Detillieux.

As I said in my previous post, I think it is really crazy how difficult it is
to use a cube OD drive to serve remote stations/cubes, especially with a
system that is touted as the end-all-be-all of "Interpersonal Computing".

This is quite frustrating, since we could have two loaded NeXTStations for
every one NeXTCube w/OD drive we have to purchase...

-- 
Nathan Janette
nathan@jacobi.biology.yale.edu